


Blown Blooms And Honeysuckle Vines

by Dikhotomia



Series: 1000 Prompts Attempt 2: The (Slightly) Unorganized Mess [4]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Brief mentions of body horror, F/F, Hanahaki Disease, Military Weiss, Pining, all the usual warnings apply
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22807930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: "She shudders, swallowing down the taste of blood and earth and draws her hand away from her face. The petals sit in her palm, glistening and mocking. Violas, she thinks as she inhales shakily, broken and hitching. Her throat burns, her lungs ache."You know it will be bad for us both if you get sick, I didn't agree to this partnership to be your babysitter." There's something nagging about her tone, but still worried and she can imagine the frown on her face and the way her brows always furrowed with it."I'm fine," she says, voice raw. "I just swallowed wrong."ORRuby Falls In Love And Suffers In Silence.
Relationships: Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee
Series: 1000 Prompts Attempt 2: The (Slightly) Unorganized Mess [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1594495
Comments: 10
Kudos: 183





	Blown Blooms And Honeysuckle Vines

**Author's Note:**

> aaaannnnddddd I'm back here, finally, briefly. After months, holy hell. If you've read Circling A Fault Line the Weiss from there returns. If not that's fine this is an entirely different AU anyway, I'm borrowing a whole lot from another idea I had a while back so I'm kind of playing with elements from it. (One element being that The Maiden's are 'rulers' in a sense of the kingdoms, all of them bound to their relics so only they can wield them. The artifacts 'choose' their Maidens because of this.)
> 
> So if anyone seems OOC it's done on purpose.
> 
> This is prompt 23 in my continued 1000 prompts adventure: "Viola" 
> 
> (Also I wrote this entire thing to Laruen Bousfield's "Blown Blooms" )

_"Hanahaki."_

And she remembers the hunter that sat beside her at the bar, smile sad as he fished too blue petals out of his drink, edges stained darker with what she knew was blood. She hadn't asked, her eyes having flicked to him with the heaving nature of his cough.

"Oh." Dull, sympathy mustered up from the parts of her that still had it. She'd heard about what it was and had brushed it off as something out of the fairy tales a younger her used to read and love, just sadder, with ends not always happy. She hadn't ever seen it until then, and it picked more at her, made her reach out and rest a hand against the other hunter's bicep. "I'm sorry." She meant it, compared to some of the other apologies she had offered as of late, the words spoken low and gentle, the dull edge left to rot in the back of her throat.

"It's okay." It wasn't and she knew it. She saw more the longer she looked at him, features pale and sallow, eyes bruise rimmed. It was taking it's toll on him, flowers and stems intertwined so deeply with his organs she doubted he could feel what part of him was flowers and what part of him was him. She could see the vines peeking out from the collar of his shirt, pushing out from underneath flesh in ways she could only imagine as painful.

As painful as a Grimm's claws.

"I hope it never happens to you." His smile is sad, pinched at the edges, eyes downcast. "It's not a fate I would wish on anyone." 

_Unrequited love._

"It won't." Because she wasn't a romantic anymore, wasn't the type of person to chase the fairy-tale ideas of princes and heroes and falling in love at first sight. She wasn't a child reading comics and playing video games and reading books for hours on end until she fell asleep. She was an adult who had learned the harsh nature of the world, a hunter who didn't have time to worry about personal relationships when she was trying to survive day to day.

_It won't happen to me._

_It won't._

\------------

_Oh._

It's the single word that inserts itself into her mind and hangs on the tip of her tongue unspoken as she stares at the sink and the petals in it. Vibrant blue and purple, burned red at the edges with the blood she tastes amid the bittersweet nature of flowers. She can feel them creeping around her lungs, stems and vines bringing with it a stuttering shock that sends her into a second coughing fit, hand pressed to her mouth and shoulders heaving violently, fingers clinging to the cold marble in a desperate attempt to keep herself standing.

_It happened to you._

"Are you okay?"

_No._

She shudders, swallowing down the taste of blood and earth and draws her hand away from her face. The petals sit in her palm, glistening and mocking. _Violas_ , she thinks as she inhales shakily, broken and hitching. Her throat burns, her lungs ache.

"You know it will be bad for us both if you get sick, I didn't agree to this partnership to be your babysitter." There's something nagging about her tone, but still worried and she can imagine the frown on her face and the way her brows always furrowed with it.

"I'm fine," she says, voice raw. "I just swallowed wrong." 

The woman behind her snorts, derisive. "That didn't sound like you swallowed wrong," she says and she hears her footsteps on the tile behind her. She reaches out to turn the sink on, washing the petals down the drain. "It sounded like you were choking."

She turns then, water still hissing out of the faucet, back pressed hard to the counter. She crushes the petals still in her palm against the marble, regarding her partner where she now stands so close.

So far.

"I'm fine, Weiss." She tries for a smile, a smile that Weiss clearly doesn't believe. Her lips part, eyes narrow, breath drawn in to speak. "Really," she cuts in before the other woman can. "I'm fine."

_I'm not--_

_\--please_

"Sure you are, Ruby," she says, voice a disbelieving drawl, but at the same time she can tell Ruby has closed herself off. Has shut down for the sake of making sure Weiss wouldn't worry about her. It just makes the ache worse, makes the vines tighten around her lungs and tangle through her ribs.

\-----------

_"Weiss Schnee."_

She remembers the first time they met face to face, sitting across from one another in a cold sterile room in some military base in atlas. Ruby with her hands cuffed and Weiss with her fingers splayed over glossy photos of Ruby slipping through the gates of an abandoned mine.

"What were you thinking?" Calm and sharp all at once, blue eyes like ice with how they pierced her. "You could have gotten killed you know." Hands lifted, arms folding across her chest. Ruby knows her from the newspapers, from the stuffy party she attended while playing bodyguard for some rich businesswoman. She remembers seeing Weiss in the crowd that night, a white and blue stained phantom that eluded her each time she tried to find her.

"I wasn't thinking." Her fingers splayed, wrists aching where the metal of her cuffs pressed against bone and muscle and skin. "I just heard screaming, so I went." And she wished she hadn't, hadn't seen the horrible twisted figures of people too long exposed to dust. Some of them no more than dust themselves, crystals jutting out of chests and arms and legs and ruined skulls. "What is that place?"

Weiss blinked, shifted, fingers coiling more securely around her biceps. "My father's dirty secret." Ruby remembers the stories of the two Schnee sisters who fled the estate and joined the military, both high ranking elites, both carrying the weight of their father's sins on their shoulders. 

"You're in the military, why haven't you-" She ate the rest of her words as Weiss leveled a look like the point of a blade at her, steel pressed to skin and threatening to draw blood. A glare cold enough it burned. It took her breath away, made her afraid and entranced all at once. 

"If it were that easy I would have." Her words didn't carry the same anger she held in her eyes, in her shoulders and in the tick of her jaw. It sounds like defeat, like Weiss' hands were as chained as Ruby's. She felt for her. 

_She **fell** for her--_

\---------

It started as a tickle, an itch in the back of her throat she soothed with a clear of her throat or a quiet cough as she went about her business. Atlas was cold, she told herself, dry. It only made sense that her throat would be a little raw, that her chest would ache faintly every time she drew too deep of a breath. She huddled deeper into her cloak and waited, breath misting in the air with each exhale. 

The job offer had been unexpected, Weiss' aloof and haughty nature colliding with her ability to properly ask for help. Ruby had still jumped at the chance, the chance to see her again, to be near her again. She knew Weiss picked her because of another job both of them had been on, the caravan through the tundra, the grimm attack.

\--------

_"Are you okay?"_

Ruby blinked up at the familiar woman standing over her, uniform coat fluttering in the breeze. Snow spiraled around them, getting in eyes and in hair and on clothes. The Grimm around them are all dead, the attack a distant memory of blades and shouts and gunshots, of violence and terrified cries of unarmed workers.

"You're bleeding." Weiss wasn't focused on her face anymore, but her side, lips drawn in a frown. And Ruby remembered now why she was laying on the ground, Crescent Rose jutting awkwardly from the ice beside where she landed. The worker too terrified to move, the Beowulf that got a lucky swing, claws burning white hot and searing through a stuttering aura. Ruby had pushed herself too hard, too fast, too much.

"I'm okay." She sat up slow, hand pressing to the wounds on her side. "Nothing my aura can't fix after some good rest." White clad fingers dipped into her line of sight and she looked up to see Weiss offering her a hand up, the look on her face patient but concerned. Distant but too there. She took hold on the offered aid, let herself be pulled up and steadied by Weiss' hands, gentle, warm. 

"Let's get you back to the city." 

She let Weiss lead her back to the truck, let Weiss bandage her up. 

_We have to stop meeting like this--_

_\--Captain._

\---------

When she finally leaves the bathroom Weiss has folded herself back up in her chair, scroll casting blue tinted shadows across the pale lines of her face. Her scar stands out more that way, highlighted dark and vicious where it cuts through her skin. Ruby doesn't know the story behind it, doesn't dare ask. "Hey Weiss?" she asks as she picks her way from the door to the bed, resting one knee against the mattress. "What do you know about flowers?"

Weiss' eyebrow rises, disappearing behind her bangs. "Flowers?" 

"Yea, like. The meaning behind them," she answers lamely, crawling up onto the bed and getting comfortable. Boots kicked off and left laying on the floor by the side. It's not the brightest question to ask, not when Weiss was already suspicious that something was wrong. The other woman studies her, scrutinizes and likely sees how pale she is, how sickly she probably looks.

It's harder to breathe now, and her skin itches in places where the vines have tangled with muscle and sinew and veins. She knows intimately what it's done to people, can't help but think back to that hunter at the bar. She was him now, suffering in silence with a disease that would one day kill her. She knew Weiss didn't feel the same, knew that she spent more time driving the Captain insane then she did anything else.

But she treasured the moments she could make Weiss crack a smile or laugh, the flowers in her lungs unfurling more and more each time she did. It hurt but Ruby didn't care.

"Why?" Weiss stands as she asks, the painted metal of her prosthetic limbs gleaming dull in the low light. Both legs and an arm, taken from her in an explosion. Ruby had seen them one night when they were forced to share a room. Weiss' scars were plenty, a starburst at her shoulder, hip and knee where metal molded into flesh, wires and joints and circuits tangling into skin and bone and muscle. Ruby touches the scars spidering out across the exposed line of her stomach when Weiss draws close enough.

Only because she's allowed, because Weiss had decided she trusted her enough to let her see it all. To let her know the story of them instead of the scar over her eye. Ruby didn't need to know either, but she was thankful Weiss had opened up to her.

"Just curious," Ruby replies, fingers falling away. "I was reading a book the other day and they mentioned Violas. I forgot to look up what they meant."

_Liar._

Weiss sits beside her, scroll forgotten on the nightstand as she considers her answer. "Innocence," she says on a breath. "Modesty. Everlasting love."

"It's also an instrument," Ruby blurts to counteract the cold chill of panic, laughing in a way that's too high and jittery from her normal one. 

"What?" Weiss deadpans, staring at her like she'd somehow sprouted and extra head.

"Did you not know Violas were also an instrument?" Ruby asks, forcing herself to meet the quizzical nature of Weiss' eyes. The other woman is too perceptive, too sharp. People look at Weiss and see an Ice Queen, a woman self absorbed who doesn't notice anything.

But it's the exact opposite to a painful degree. Weiss notices _everything._

"I knew they were, Ruby," Weiss drawls in that way she does, edged with the faintest sense of annoyance. "But that has nothing to do with why you're asking me about the flower."

"I-" and she laughs, high, nervous. "I told you why-"

Weiss reaches for her, then past, fingers ghosting her jaw as she goes for something on the collar of the cloak she should have shed before she climbed into the bed. She comes away with a petal, one of the many Ruby had coughed up. She's gentle with it, running her thumb over the delicate edges as she examines it. Weiss is used to the rose petals, Ruby has accidentally covered her in them, then stopped and stared at the way the red stood out against the silver and blue of her.

"Viola," Weiss whispers, eyes lifting, piercing. Ruby feels pinned to her spot by it, ice in her veins and heart beating too wildly for her liking. She knows the other woman is putting it together, her coughing, her nervous behavior, the obvious fact that she's trying to hide something and doing a terrible job of it.

(Ruby was always a bad liar.)

"Oh! I must have--uh, gotten a petal on me when we were passing by that flower shop earlier! Silly me, so careless!" She's laughing again, turning away and laying down. "Goodnight!" She pretends to sleep curled in her cloak, eyes squeezed shut and breathing forced even. Weiss sits beside her for what feels like hours, the weight of her gaze burning a hole in her back.

"You dolt." Words so quiet Ruby almost thinks she was hearing things and she hears and feels as Weiss leaves, steps near silent clicks on the wood, door snapping shut gently.

_Weiss knows--_

The ache is unfathomable.

_Ruby dreams of blown blooms and honeysuckle vines._

Ruby wakes to another coughing fit, chest an aching hole that burns and consumes every inch of her with it. She smothers it behind her hands, wheezing and hitching, petals spilling into her palms. She listens for Weiss' steps, both relieved and devastated when they don't come.

She climbs out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom, fingers knotted in the fabric of her shirt. She wonders how much time she has left as she strips to find the honeysuckle vines sprouting from underneath her skin, pushing up and itching.

_It's been months._

_Months._

_She knows._

She finds Weiss in the middle of a call after she's showered and dressed again, ignoring the way her skin crawls and burns. She rubs at her arm as she listens to the quiet drone of Weiss' voice, vaguely hearing Ironwood on the other end. Weiss realizes she's there halfway through, pulling the scroll away from her ear with a "hold on she's here."  
Ironwood's face appears on the screen a moment later. "Ruby," he says and she nods.

"Anyway, as I was saying Captain, you're close by to the city and I need an agent in that party. Your team is otherwise busy on other assignments so you and Ruby are all I've got."

Captain, Ruby thinks, fighting down her smile. 'Captain' wasn't even Weiss' rank, it was just a joke that came from the members of Weiss' unit, something to call her that wasn't her name.

_Captain._

"Yes, sir," Weiss says, head propped against her fist, lips pursed. "And you're sure this guy is going to be there?"

"There's a high chance he will be," Ironwood affirms, too serious for Ruby's liking. "Because Cinder Fall is going to be there."

For a second Ruby can ignore the pain in her chest and the itch in her skin, eyes widening as she regards the screen. "The maiden of Vale? She's alive?"

"She is," Ironwood confirms. "She's been living in Anima for a while now, recovering. Haven has been housing her ever since Vale fell and Beacon was destroyed."

_Alive-_

"Alright," Weiss interjects, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "We'll take care of it. The last thing we need is the crown falling into the wrong hands." The conversation goes on into small details, a strategy and what to do if for some reason their target doesn't show up. Either way, they'll be going back to Atlas after all this.

"Who is it?" Weiss asks once she's tucked her scroll away, gaze still fixed on the wall in front of where she sits.

"Who--huh?" Ruby plays dumb, looking at the side of her face, at the way her hair falls over her shoulders and across her uniform. "You don't know about Cinder?"

Weiss looks at her then, frustrated. "I know about the maiden, stop avoiding the question. The coughing? The bad lies? I know, Ruby. So just tell me, who is it? Who is it that's slowly killing you."

_You. It's you._

"It doesn't matter does it? I know she doesn't feel the same."

_Why do you keep lying?_

"How do you know if you don't tell her?" Weiss counters, raising her eyebrows.

"How do I tell her?" Ruby replies, lifting her hand and digging her fingers into the fabric of her shirt again, pendant digging harshly into her palm. "How do I tell her when I'm so afraid of being rejected? This pain is easier to deal with, Weiss."

_Tell her._

_Tell her._

_Tell-_

"No pain is easier then another," Weiss says, rising to her feet. She's beautiful like that, all grace, immaculately put together despite her hair still being loose. A military officer and a Schnee all in one lithely muscled package. "But fine," she says as she ties her hair up, turning to go for where Myrtenaster sits against the wall. "I can't force you to say anything."

Ruby gorges herself on sweets in the restaurant they choose to go to, Weiss pretends not to notice this time.

_Why can't I tell you that I-_

_Love you?_

\----------

They show up at the party dressed as they are, no fancy dresses or suits. No care to appear as an upper echelon when they're there to do a job. There's other officers there, all of them under Weiss' order. Ruby has another memory tucked away of the woman at her side, of the argument she broke into with the head of the military base. She had struggled the entire time when the shorter woman had climbed up on a crate to get in Weiss' face, trying and failing to intimidate the other woman.

"It's an order from General Ironwood himself," Weiss had said, terse, cutting. Hanging at the end of her ability to tolerate the other woman whose name Ruby couldn't even be bothered to remember. 

"You elites! Thinking you can just stroll in here and take control-"

Weiss pulled her scroll, eyebrows raised. 

Daring.

The Captain walked away victorious.

Ruby hangs back a bit as the soldiers spread out through the crowd more, each of them searching for their target. Weiss observes from the top of the steps, not quite willing to move into the throng of people herself. "I hate these kinds of parties," Weiss had said once, both of them stuck in dresses they didn't really want to be wearing, Weiss forced to hide her prothestics with gloves and tights and thigh high boots. Ruby understood why she hated them, because she hated them too.  
Beacon fell during one.

"My, that's a face I haven't seen in years."

Ruby looks down to meet familiar fire gold eyes, narrowed in a smile she can't see due to the obsidian mask curved across the lower half of Cinder's face. Her hair still falls the way she remembers it, black dipped in ash, the gold accents of her uniform gleaming. 

"You know her?" Weiss asks, leaning in to her side, attention fixated on the Maiden feet away from them. The gnawing ache in her chest eases with the closeness.

"Yea," Ruby replies, smiling a little. "Cinder was my best friend growing up, I...thought she died in the fall. No one had seen her escape the academy..."

"Ruby, you of all people should know," Cinder says, making her way up the steps. Her uniform is still the same, deeply vibrant reds and gold, but she looks wrong without the scale armor that Ruby remembers her hardly ever taking off. Looks wrong without the crown that should have been wreathing her head. "I'm notoriously hard to kill."

"I guess 'survived a collapsing building' can be added to the list of 'things that failed ot kill you'," Ruby replies, smiling and allowing herself to be wrapped up in a hug. She leans into it, into the warm line of Cinder's body before she hugs her back, tight, desperate. The full relief of knowing someone she thought was gone wasn't.

"You could have written," she remarks as Cinder pulls away, fire bright eyes sliding to where Weiss still stands so close to them both. "Or...is there some top secret thing I'm not allowed to know that kept you from writing."

"I was in a coma," Cinder explains, focus back on her. "I wasn't doing much of anything until about a year ago. It was decided I was better off playing dead until I was fully recovered, so I had little to no contact with the outside world. I spent the last month playing catch up on everything I had missed."

And that, Ruby realizes, squirming to ignore the itch that she had forgotten about until now, was a lot. 

"What's with the mask?" Weiss asks, yanking both of their attention to her. "This isn't a masquerade."

Cinder's eyes narrow on that smile Ruby wishes she could see, something serpentine and dangerous that brings back memories of all the trouble they got into. "I sustained a lot of damage to my body. The mask is to hide the scars, people have a bad habit of staring."

"Oh." Weiss sounds guilty, lips twisted in a frown. "I'm sorry."

"No need, I know it's strange." Cinder shifts, eyes flicking away to the two women that stand at the bottom of the steps now, watching. "You must be Weiss Schnee, Ironwood told me you would be here."

Back to business.

"I am. I'm sure the General informed you why?" Weiss extends a hand, polite, and Cinder takes it. The shake is brief.

"He did. I'll have the soldiers with me keep in contact with yours. But please don't forget that I am a Maiden. I can handle myself if the need arises, no need to senselessly endanger yourself or your people. If anything, get the party goers out."

_They'll just be in the way-_

"Right. I'll keep that in mind."

Cinder smiles again, nods and disappears without a word. Heading back down the steps and molding into the crowd like a bloody shadow. The party drags on after that, everyone mingling, eating, dancing. Ruby and Weiss migrate from one end of the hall to the other, stopping for food and drinks and the occasional report. Nothing happens, no one comes.

"Is it her?" Weiss asks around the edge of her glass of wine, so slowly sipped Ruby didn't think she was actually drinking it. "Is it Cinder?"

"Oh-Oh no," Ruby says, barking a laugh to mask the cough tickling at the back of her throat. "No."

_But it could have been._

"I see." Weiss leaves it alone and Ruby watches as she drinks, eye drawn to the motion of her throat.

_It's you._

\------

Weiss finds her on the floor of the bathroom in her hotel room later that evening, petals and spattered blood scattered around her, vines twisting across her bared arms. Ruby stares up at her listlessly, lacking the strength or the willpower to protest the other woman seeing her like this.

"Ruby-"

"It's you." She gives in then, gives in to the horror and the concern written all over Weiss' face. "It's you." Because it doesn't matter any more, she knows, she knows she's dying. Knows that the months of silent blissful suffering is coming to a slow agonizing end.

Weiss' eyes widen, lips parting on the shocked breath she pulls. "You idiot!" she hisses, kneeling down and gathering her up in her arms. "You absolute idiot! You've been suffering all this time because of me?!"

Ruby smiles, blood and earth on her tongue and in her throat. "Like I said...I was afrai-"

Weiss kisses her, heedless of the blood on Ruby's lips. She kisses her and the relief is immense, but not immediate. The vines inch back, the flowers don't strangle as much. Ruby melts into it, tangles her fingers in the heavy fabric of Weiss' coat, pushes up into the firm line of her body as Weiss pulls her closer, wraps her up and holds her tight.

"I do feel the same," she whispers against her lips when they part, brows pinched together, worry and something else burning bright in her eyes. "I have for a while now."

"....Wow," Ruby says, laughing at herself as she toys gently with the edges of Weiss' coat. "I..."

"It's fine. Just tell me things next time, don't try and badly lie to cover it up."

She lets Weiss pick her up, lets Weiss carry her back to her bed. "Okay."

_Weiss stays with her._

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/modulatechaos) though it's primarily Fire Emblem....


End file.
